Scaffold Activities

Scaffold Activities

Scaffolding activities, or breaking larger activities or tasks into their component parts, is a great way to support learning and mastery. It also helps you verify exactly what it is that students know or don't know, or what they are able to do and what still needs work.
 

Reduce Cognitive Load

  • Cognitive load is a person's ability to take in a certain amount of information of focus on a task.
  • When the cognitive load is too high, learning won't occure because students are no longer able to take in what they need to in order to complete the task.
  • Breaking tasks into pieces supports reducing cognitive load because once a task is mastered, it is no longer a strain on cognitive load and a person's capacilty to do more with the independent skills or information is increased. 

“The key to reducing cognitive load effectively lies in identifying which of the demanding aspects of a task are related to the skills students need to learn and which may be disruptive to (or distracting from) those learning goals.” (Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietra, Marsha C. Levett, Marie K. Norman, (2010). How Learning Works, 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (p. ). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.)

Aquire Component Skills

  • When a task is complex, it's hard to see where a student is struggling.
  • By breaking it down into each indepedent piece before putting it back together allows students to practice and master the necessary skills needed to succeed before having to take on the additional challenge of applying them comprehensively.

 

Practice Integrating Skills

  • Before students are set free to complete a large task on their own to demonstrate their ability to bring all the skills together, slowly group the component skills together.
    • For example, take the steps of a research paper and break them down into peices of their whole, but have each part build on the previous one.
  • This way, students get the component skill practice and feedback they need to become proficienct, and at the same time, see how all of the parts relate to the bigger picture.
  • This can work for labs, case studies, website development etc.

 

Know When to Apply Skills

  • Once students are able to perform the individual skills and successfully integrate them, they then need to learn the conditions in which the skills are appropriate for application.
    • Which skills are relevant to a particular problem?
    • Practice applying the correct skills in the correct context.
  • This is what enables students to transfer skills and knowledge from one situation or subject to another--arguably the ultimate goal in education.

 

Source:

Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietra, Marsha C. Levett, Marie K. Norman, (2010). How Learning Works, 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 

What Does this Look Like?

Research Task:
  • Pose a question or topic
  • Begin research
  • Complete an annotated bibliography
  • Write a thesis statement
  • Write a draft
  • Complete revisions
  • Write a final draft

 

Project:
  • Draft a proposal
  • Create a wireframe or storyboard
  • Develop your first draft quicky
  • Review and iterate
  • Develop a final test
  • Final review
  • Develop a final draft